NOrma markley

norma markley

The works of artist Norma Markley are carefully designed pieces that invoke the legacy of pop art, focusing on a strange social intersection of motels, towels, neon, take-out food, and sex. Creating unpredictable formal variations on this select group of products and services, Markley recombines an idiosyncratic mix of social spaces and social signage with the appropriated language of commodified sex, affixing provocative phrases to products that unblushingly suggest all kinds of hardcore action. Her bathroom towels are perfectly embroidered with messages about kissing and licking. She makes neon signs offering giddy, illuminated phrases and Chinese take-out containers, cleverly inscribed with a series of queries and random paradoxical exhortations. Markley’s work transforms products from ephemeral commercial encounters into stylishly produced, thoughtful symbols of throwaway culture.